Structural, thermal and nuclear shielding properties of lithium lead phosphate glasses: Influence of lithium oxide additive

Abstract

In this paper, the structural, thermal and nuclear radiation shielding properties of a new Lead–Lithium-Phosphate glass system with different amount lithium oxide were studied. The glass samples were prepared by the conventional melt-quenching method and they having compositions (75-x) P2O5– 25PbO- xLi2O with x = 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 mol%. The influence of Li2O content on the structural, thermal, radiation shielding properties, and other related properties of the synthesized glasses was studied. The structural properties were investigated using XRD and Raman spectroscopy. The glass transition temperature Tg and crystallization onset temperature Tx are estimated from the DSC profile.The GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulation code was used to estimate thermal neutron attenuation coefficient (μnt) in a wide neutron energy range of 0.0253–100 eV and ParShield code was used to calculate effective fast neutrons removal cross-section (∑R). The gamma-ray attenuation parameters such as mass attenuation coefficients (μm), effective atomic number (Zeff), effective electron density (Neff) and half-value layer (HVL) have been computed by using ParShield code in the energy range of 0.103–1.33 MeV. However, the total mass stopping power (MSP) and projected range (PR) values have been estimated for alpha particles (4He2+) and Triton particle (3H) by using SRIM in the energy range of 0.1–10 MeV.